The God of the Amen

HE full beauty and significance of these
remarkable words are only reached
when we attend to the literal render¬
ing of a part of them which is ob¬
scured in our Version. As they stand
in the original, they have, in both cases, instead of the
vague expression, “The God of truth,” the singularly
picturesque one, “The God of the Amen.”

I. — Note the meaning of the Name. Now, Amen is an adjective, which means literally firm, true, reliable, or the like. And, as we know, its liturgical use is that, in the olden time, and to some extent in the present time, it was the habit of the listening people to utter it at the close of prayer or praise. But besides this use at the end of somebody else’s statement, which the sayer of the “Amen” confirms by its utterance, we also find it used at the beginning of a statement, by the speaker, in order to confirm his own utterance by the word.

“THE GOD OF THE AMENT

And these two uses of the expression, reposing on its plain meaning, in the first instance signifying, “I tell you that it is so”; and in the second instance signifying, “So may it be! ’ or, “So we believe it is, underlie this grand title which God takes to Himself here, “the God of the Amen,” both His Amen and ours’ So that the thought opens up very beautifully and simply into these two, His truth and our faith.

First, it emphasizes the absolute truthfulness of every word that comes from His lips. Tlieie is implied in the title, that He really has spoken, and declared to man something of His will, something of His nature, something of His purposes, something of our destiny. And now, He puts, as it were, the broad seal upon the charter, and says, “Amen! Yerily it is so, and My word of Revelation is no man s imagination, and My word of command is the absolute unveiling ol human duty and human perfectness, and My word ol promise is that upon which a man may rest all his weight and be safe forever.” God’s word is “Amen!” man’s word is “perhaps” For in regard of the foundation truths of man’s belief and experience and need, no human tongue can venture to utter its own asseverations with nothing behind them but itself, and expect men to accept them; but that is exactly what God does, and alone has the right to do. His word absolutely, and through and through, in every fibre ol it, is reliable and true.

Now do not forget that there was one who came to us and said, “Amen! Amen! I say unto you.” Jesus Christ, in all His deep and wonderful utterances, arrogated to Himself the right which God here declares to be exclusively His, and He said, “I too have, and I too exercise, the right and the authority to lay My utterances down before you, and expect you to take them because of nothing else than because I say them.” God is the God of the Amen! The last book of Scripture, when it draws back the curtain from the mysteries of the glorified session of Jesus Christ at the right hand of God, makes Him say to us, “These things saith the Amen!” And if you want to know what that means, its explanation follows in the next clause, “the faithful and true witness.”

But then, on the other hand, necessarily involved in this title, though capable of being separately considered, is not only the absolute truthfulness of the Divine word, but also the thorough -going reliance, on our parts, which that word expects’ and demands. God’s “Amen,” and “Verily,” of confirmation, should ever cause the “Amen” of acceptance and assent to leap from our lips. If He begins with that mighty word, so soon as the solemn voice has ceased, its echo should rise from our hearts. The city that cares for the charter which its Ring has given it, will prepare a fitting, golden receptacle in which to treasure it. And the men who believe that God in very deed has spoken laws that illuminate, and commandments that guide, and promises that calm and strengthen and fulfil themselves, will surely prepare in their hearts an appropriate receptacle for those precious and infallible words. God’s truth has corresponding to it our trust. God’s faithfulness demands, and is only adequately met by, our faith. If He gives us the sure foundation to build upon, it will be a shame for us to bring wood, hay, stubble, and build these upon the Rock of Ages. The building “THE GOD OF THE AMEN

should correspond with its foundation, and the faith which grasps the sure word should have in it something of the unchangeableness and certainty and absoluteness of that word which it grasps. If His revelation of Himself is certain, you and I ought to be certain of His revelation of Himself. Our certitude should correspond to its certainty.

Ah! my friend, what a miserable contrast there is between the firm, unshaken, solid security of the Divine word upon which we say that we trust, and the pool, feeble, broken trust which we build upon it. “Let not that man think that He shall receive anything of the Lord”; but let us expect, as well as “ask, in faith, nothing wavering”; and let our “Amen! ring out in answer to God’s.

The Apostle Paul has a striking echo of the words of my text in the second Epistle to the Corinthians.

“All the promises of God in Him are yea! and through Him also is the Amen!” The assent, full, swift, frank — the assent of the believing heart to the great Word of God comes through the same channel, and reaches God by the same way as God’s word on which it builds comes to us. The “God of the Amen, in both senses of the word, is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is the seal as well as the substance of the Divine promises, and Whose voice in us is the answer to, and the grasp of, the promises of which He is the substance and soul.

II, How notice, next, how this God of the Amen

is, by reason of that very characteristic, the source of

all blessing.

“He who blesseth himself in the earth shall bless himself in the God of Truth.” That phrase of blessing one’s self in, which is a frequent Old Testament expression, is roughly equivalent to invoking, and therefore receiving, blessing from. You find it, for instance, in the 72nd Psalm, in that grand burst which closes one of the books of the Psalter, and hails the coming of the Messianic times, of which my text also is a prediction. “Men shall be blessed in Him,” or, rather, “shall bless themselves in Him,” which is a declaration that all needful benediction shall come down upon humanity through the coming Messias, as well as that men shall recognize in that Messias the source of all their blessing and good. So the text declares that, in those days that are yet to come, the whole earth shall be filled with men, whose eyes have been purged from ignorance and sin, and from the illusions of sense and the fascinations of folly? &nd who have learned that only in the God of the Amen is the blessing of their life to be found.

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